Do Contests and Giveaways Still Work? – The Best Sales Training Seminars Give You the Answer

Games are an excellent way to get people interested in you and participate in whatever you are doing. There is something about the possibility of winning something, even if it’s just recognition, that fires up the spirit and increases involvement.

The best sales training seminars utilize contests and giveaways to reduce boredom and increase retention of the material being taught. They also teach how to use contests and giveaways among your sales staff to increase sales activity, and your prospect and customer bases in order to drive more business from them.

Let’s look at how some of the best sales training seminars use contests and giveaways to boost results and revenue.

Gamify your sales

Awarding bonuses based on sales performance sends the right message: those who produce most, are rewarded most.

However, I have witnessed a few firms fall short of the mark by making the contests too complicated. Or the prizes stink. So don’t buy a corny sausage, cheese and jam basket from some catalog and expect that to get people working harder. And don’t have 20 prize tiers, each with its own set of criteria.

Few prizes are as motivating as cold hard cash, so if you want to keep things simple, just give each winner a check. Or, if you want to run a contest EVERYONE will want to play (not only your top producers), award an office-wide prize if the whole team meets certain production numbers. This can include a trip to Vegas for those with deep pockets, or a nice company dinner, or even adding a table tennis corner in the break room.

Social media contests

According to data compiled by Kontest, on average, social media contests and giveaways produce a 34% increase in fans and likes.

The key is to make entering easy and appropriate for the platform where the contest is being promoted. For example, a picture contest is appropriate for Instagram, whereas a video contest might be better hosted on Face-book or YouTube. Or you can use your own website — promote on social media, and require entrants to visit a landing page made specifically for the contest where you can collect an e-mail address.

The top corporate sales training programs and seminars will give you other social media promotion tips.

Make training competitive

Tom Hopkins, an excellent sales trainer, gives away prizes such as artwork to the top scoring-students of his sales training seminars (everyone takes a test at the end of the course). This greatly increases the intensity with which attendees take notes and memorize what he teaches them.

The best corporate sales training seminars incorporate some form of contest or giveaway in order to motivate students to pay attention and learn. I highly recommend you start incorporating them into your own in-house training sessions — a $10 Starbucks gift card can go a long way towards motivating better retention.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, the answer to the question of whether or not contests and giveaways still work is an emphatic YES!